Ever since Amtrak’s infrastructure began to fail on the way to, and under, New York Penn Station, NJ Transit has been driving one point home: The apparently endless delays and cancellations and immeasurable periods of time spent in a tunnel beneath the Hudson River are most definitely not NJ Transit’s fault. | Getty

In official alerts to its customers, NJ Transit knows whom to blame: Amtrak

On Tuesday evening, right after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie excoriated Amtrak for “regularly screwing our state,” NJ Transit, which Christie controls, sent out a peevish alert to riders.

“NJ TRANSIT rail customers have been forced to deal with delays, derailments and unreliable service because Amtrak, which owns the tracks our service relies upon, has neglected the maintenance of its critical infrastructure for years,” the message began.

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For that reason, the angry email continued, between July 10 and Sept. 1, “delays on all rail lines, except for the Atlantic City Rail line, are inevitable.”

Users who buy tickets on NJ Transit’s app now find the same message, highlighted in yellow at the top of the screen. A similar message appears on the agency's website.

The tone is a bit “unusual” for a government communication, said George Arzt, who used to manage government communications for former New York City Mayor Ed Koch.

But for NJ Transit, the substance, if not the tone, has become routine.

Ever since Amtrak’s infrastructure began to fail on the way to, and under, New York Penn Station, NJ Transit has been driving one point home: The apparently endless delays and cancellations and immeasurable periods of time spent in a tunnel beneath the Hudson River are most definitely not NJ Transit’s fault.

To wit: Tuesday, May 23, 7:21 a.m.: “Amtrak has disclosed they have taken another track out of service at [Penn Station] due to their ongoing track repairs.”

Or this message from Tuesday, May 16: “Train service in/out of [Penn Station] is subject to up to 30 minute delays due to congestion caused by the speed restriction in place due to ongoing Amtrak track work.”

One minute later, a postscript: “As well as single tracking over Portal Bridge due to an Amtrak switch failure.”

On April 14, when a train stopped dead in the tunnel under the Hudson River — blocking the busiest rail corridor in North America as the Easter weekend was starting — NJ Transit’s communications attributed delays to an "Amtrak overhead power problem.” But Amtrak later said it was actually the fault of an NJ Transit pantograph.

A spokeswoman for NJ Transit said the messages were generated by agency staff, not the governor’s office. An official there, speaking on background, said no direction was needed: “We and the Gov's office ARE on the page that if it's an Amtrak issue, we are saying so.”

Amtrak declined to comment.

Steve Sigmund, a former Port Authority official who commutes on NJ Transit, described its propensity to name Amtrak in its communications as “a little transparent.”

“It’s also not all Amtrak’s fault,” he said. “It’s everyone’s fault from having a 110-year-old tunnel that’s clearly obsolete.”

It was Christie, after all, who unilaterally killed funded plans for a new cross-Hudson rail tunnel to replace the one that was falling apart even before it was flooded by Hurricane Sandy.

“Governor Christie’s hands are not clean on this,” said Martin Robins, one of the founding executives of NJ Transit. “But the fact is, he’s in the last year of his tenure and I guess what we can’t do is expect miracles of leadership at this point.”

It was also Christie who cut state subsidies to NJ Transit and diverted capital funds to prop up its operating budget, such that the railroad would be delay-prone and safety challenged, even without Amtrak’s intervention. It was also an NJ Transit train that derailed in Hoboken last year, killing one and injuring more than 100 for reasons having nothing to do with Amtrak.

With his attacks on Amtrak, some say, Christie has been able to divert attention from his own transportation legacy.

“What’ the expression? Nobody roots for Goliath?” said Carl Golden, who handled communications for Republican New Jersey governors Tom Kean and Christie Whitman. “Well, nobody is rooting for Amtrak. So it’s easy to lay the blame at their feet.”